Trematon Castle

The site above the Lynher predates the Norman Conquest. The Cornish historian Richard Polwhele counted Trematon among the residences of Condor of Cornwall and the ancient earls, with Launceston and Tintagel, and said it was built before the Conquest; James McKenzie describes an earthwork fortress belonging to the earls of Cornwall, and William Woolwater an ancient palace of the Cornish kings raised before 959.

The castle itself was probably the work of Robert, Count of Mortain, half-brother to William the Conqueror, built on the ruins of an earlier Roman fort soon after the Conquest — either bestowed on Robert by the Conqueror or, as the military historian Sir Charles Oman had it, established here by Robert himself. It became the caput of the feudal barony of Trematon: a motte-and-bailey whose oval stone shell keep, its walls ten feet thick and thirty feet high, stands on the earlier mound. By Domesday in 1086 Robert owned it and Reginald de Vautort was its lord.

Polwhele held that Cadoc of Cornwall may have been restored to the earldom after Robert's son William rebelled in 1104, and may have lived and died at Trematon. Firmer ground comes in 1166, when the Vautorts were still lords here and the Cartae Baronum recorded them holding 59 knight's fees from the Earl of Cornwall and one fee in chief. From the Conquest until 1270 the rights to the ferry from Saltash Passage, on the Plymouth side of the Tamar, across to Saltash belonged to them as well; in the thirteenth century that rent came to nearly seven pounds sterling, and after Roger de Vautort's sale it was paid to the Earl of Cornwall's bailiff.

Roger de Vautort sold castle and manor to Richard, Earl of Cornwall, who bought them in 1270 for £300, and Trematon has been the property of the Earls and Dukes of Cornwall without interruption since. The rectangular gatehouse of two floors, with its portcullis, was built in that same year. Before the Duchy of Cornwall was created as an annex to the English crown in 1337, Trematon was one of the four principal residences of the earls, alongside Launceston, Restormel and Liskeard.

The antiquary John Leland wrote of it in 1542: "The greaunt and auncient Castelle of Tremertoun is upon a Rokky Hille; wherof great peaces yet stond, and especially the Dungeon. The Ruines now serve for a prison. Great Liberties long to this Castelle."

When Sir Francis Drake returned from his circumnavigation in 1580 he came into harbour at Plymouth, then slipped out to anchor behind St Nicholas Island until word came from Queen Elizabeth's court that the treasure he had gathered was to be stored at Trematon. It was gold, silver and precious stones, mainly emeralds, taken by piracy from Spanish ships along the west coast of South America. Before it went on for storage in the Tower of London the hoard was kept for a time aboard the Golden Hinde.

A Georgian house of about 1808 stands within the castle courtyard, with four reception rooms, six main bedrooms and servants' quarters; part of the original castle wall was demolished to give it a view into the surrounding countryside.

In 1961 the Duchy of Cornwall advertised the castle to let on a full repairing lease of 21 years, with breaks, at a rent of £250 a year. It became the Cornish home of Hugh Foot, Lord Caradon, and his son Paul Foot, the campaigning journalist, spent some of his youth there. Queen Elizabeth II visited on 25 July 1962 with the Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall, Sir Edward Bolitho, before driving to Fowey to embark in the royal yacht Britannia. The landscape designers Julian and Isabel Bannerman leased castle and grounds from the Duchy in 2012 and made a garden there; in 2019 the lease was bought by Frieda Gormley and Javvy M Royle of House of Hackney, who redesigned the interiors and ran the castle as a pop-up hotel. The site has been a scheduled monument since 1960.